Posts from 2012

EOL will be at the 2014 National Parks and National Geographic BioBlitz at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, California, USA! Learn more about species that might be found during the BioBlitz on EOL by scanning these Collections (http://eol.org/collections/101323).

Researchers studying baboons in Namibia recently reported that an individual baboon's personality predicted how well they would learn about a new food source from watching other baboons, with bolder and more anxious animals learning more successfully. Specific social relationships among individuals also impacted the ability of a baboon to learn from other individuals, a phenomenon that is clearly not limited to baboons. The role of family relationships in learning among ravens is the subject of this One Species at a Time podcast from Encyclopedia of Life.

Researchers from Hawaii and Japan have outfitted sharks around Hawaii with sophisticated sensors and video recorders to measure and see where they are going, how they are getting there, and what they are doing once they reach their destinations. Among other discoveries, this work has revealed that sharks use powered swimming more often than a gliding motion to move through the ocean, contrary to what scientists had previously thought, and that deep-sea sharks swim in slow motion compared to shallow water species. The researchers recently reported on this work at the 2014 Ocean Sciences Meeting co-sponsored by the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, The Oceanography Society and the American Geophysical Union.

Very far from the Hawaiian Islands, in the Canadian Arctic, another shark researcher has been remotely tracking the movements of Greenland Sharks, slow-moving sharks that feast on Ringed Seals (among other prey), to better understand their habits. Listen to Encyclopedia of Life’s One Species at a Time podcast about the Greenland Shark.